On February 8th, Princeton’s Department of English and the Princeton Committee on Palestine hosted Mohammed El-Kurd as the Edward W. Said ’57 Memorial Lecture Fund speaker. The Tory previously reported on the controversy surrounding El-Kurd’s invitation. In the lecture, titled “On Perfect Victims,” El-Kurd endorsed violence against Israel and its civilians. Professor Jeff Dolven, Acting Chair of the English Department, continued to defend the invitation of El-Kurd and his comments about violence.
El-Kurd Calls for Violence
Though the one-hour lecture by El-Kurd focused on the perception of Palestinians in the media, El-Kurd’s comments on Palestinian violence provoked loud audience applause.
El-Kurd opened by expressing his appreciation for the English Department’s invitation. “I’m really, really glad to be here doing one of my favorite things: causing chaos at Ivy Leagues,” he began. He then referenced what he claimed were protests and physical threats to his lecture, drawing attention to police officers at the entrances to the event hall. The Tory could not verify any protests or physical threats against the lecture. An earlier letter by students expressing concern for El-Kurd signed by over 40 students challenged El-Kurd’s history of antisemitism.
In the lecture – which El-Kurd noted was written during his travel to Princeton – El-Kurd observed that American media portrays Palestinians as victims. “The Palestinian people on television screens or more largely in the public sphere exist in a false dichotomy: we are either victims or terrorists.” He argued that Palestinian resistance must take on a new face in the media, featuring adult men and violent resistors, and that Palestinians should be shown to “charge or attack.”
El-Kurd elicited applause and groans from the approximately 150 audience members in his defense of and calls for violence against Israel. Violence is “our natural response to brutalization,” he noted. El-Kurd proceeded to address directly whether he “supports“ or “condemns” violence against civilians in Israel. “Do I believe in violence? Well, I don’t believe in violation,” he said. El-Kurd stated that he would refrain from elaborating because the event was public. The statement won loud applause from much of the audience.
While discussing the anti-Israel activism of Edward Said, El-Kurd defended rock-throwing as a tactic against Israelis, including a “wish” that rocks “hit someone on the head.” Fourteen Israelis have been killed in recent years by rock-throwing. El-Kurd also defended Iyad Sawalha, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the death of dozens of Israelis, and mocked those who call him a serial killer. In a May 2022 Letter to the Editor published in The Daily Princetonian, a left-leaning campus publication, Professor Yair Mintzker referred to Sawalha as a serial killer and condemned the Prince for platforming defenses of Sawalha.
During the question and answer period, one questioner asked about the “Jewish lobby” controlling American foreign policy. El-Kurd declined to answer. Another questioner asked what the status of Israel’s Jews would be if Israel was destroyed. El-Kurd again declined to answer.
English Department Stands by El-Kurd
In an interview following El-Kurd’s lecture, the Tory spoke with Professor Jeff Dolven, Acting Chair of the Department of English, about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Department’s sponsorship of El-Kurd. The Tory previously published Dolven’s statement to the Tory concerning the event.
Dolven declined to condemn any of El-Kurd’s comments. When asked directly about the language of violence, Dolven said that he “thought his [El-Kurd’s] words about violence were very guarded and very careful.” He clarified that he believed El-Kurd held back from his most extreme views so as to “sort of preserv[e] a chance to speak to us.” The Tory pressed Dolven to comment on El-Kurd’s hope for rocks to hit the heads of Israelis. For Dolven, this call was part of the “balance of his political commitments.” The Acting Chair shared that he was not taken aback by “anything” that was said during the event.
On the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Dolven expressed agreement with El-Kurd. He recognized “violence” as a legitimate form of resistance “that happens in many cases where justice is violated.” Dolven disputed the notion that he should condemn or could summarize his thoughts on Hamas, a US-designated terrorist organization that routinely launches missiles from Gaza into civilian areas of Israel. “You are asking me to summarize in a sentence my opinion about Hamas?”
Dolven discussed the importance of El-Kurd speaking on campus as a matter of “free speech.” He argued that the speaker met President Eisgruber’s speech standard of “mutual respect.” During his lecture, El-Kurd said that, “when I’m on stage, I have little to no tolerance to Zionist ideology.”
Dolven is a signatory of a 2020 open letter that called to create a committee “oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty,” a move that law experts say would “eliminate” academic freedom.
Students Question Speech Code’s Double Standards
In 2020, the Department of English released a “Statement on Anti-Racism.” “We seek to investigate racist beliefs and practices with rigor and compassion. We emphasize our determination to join together in this anti-racist work—work that has too often been carried mostly by Black, Indigenous, and other people of color,” the statement reads. Dolven, then Director of Undergraduate Studies of the English Department, is listed as a signatory of the statement.
Students have asked whether the English Department exhibits a double standard towards antisemitic and anti-Israel hatred. “The double standard is glaring,” Alex Ostrin ’25 told the Tory. “The English Department claims to fight racism and then turns around and platforms an antisemite.”
Hoffman is a former student officer of Tigers for Israel and president of Israel TigerTrek.
The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of the Tory, both signatories of the letter to the Department of English, recused themselves from this story.
Editor’s Note: Following the publication of this article, Professor Jeff Dolven wrote to one of the writers of this piece demanding an edit to the article. When asked to identify what position was being misrepresented, he declined to clarify; instead, he wrote that the article would be “damaging” to his reputation and demanded, with an accompanying open-ended threat, that the article be edited “immediately.” In light of the threat against student writers, the Tory has edited the original piece according to the demands of Dolven.
(photo ©The Princeton Tory 2023)
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